Policy Paper

Geopolitics and Economic Statecraft Project and the Assessing American Alliances Project

American Roulette: Scenarios for US Retrenchment and the Future of European Defense

Policymakers need to plan for a range of possibilities when thinking about U.S. retrenchment from Europe

By Emma Ashford Author • MacKenna Rawlins Research

Grand Strategy

July 8, 2024

Political dynamics in the United States and the rise of China have increased the likelihood of U.S. retrenchment from European defense in coming years. But the form and timing of that retrenchment — along with the ways in which European states might respond — are still unclear. This paper examines the dynamics of U.S. retrenchment from Europe by exploring three hypothetical, yet plausible scenarios for U.S. retrenchment from Europe over the next decade. The scenarios suggest something that is already understood implicitly by most: that there are better ways and worse ways for the United States to retrench from Europe, and that advance planning may help to mitigate some of the worst outcomes.

Introduction

European policymakers and Washington elites spent much of the first Trump presidency fearing that the mercurial president would withdraw America from NATO, leaving Europeans to fend for themselves. Despite former President Donald Trump’s repeated criticisms of free-riding European states that did not spend enough on defense, a combination of apathy, lobbying by specific European leaders, and the best efforts of Trump’s own appointees sustained America’s presence in Europe through his first term. Today, the prospect of American retrenchment from Europe looms larger. In addition to the possibility of a second Trump presidency — one likely to be staffed by advisors who are more aligned with Trump’s desires than during his first term — the United States is increasingly overstretched, facing defense budget constraints and attempting to pivot belatedly toward a rising China.

Ongoing debates over European strategic autonomy and defense spending show that European capitals are aware they will need to carry more of the load for their own defense preparedness in the coming years.¹ Indeed, though proponents of the status quo could be correct that America can sustain its presence in Europe, this prospect looks increasingly dim.² As one recent report states, “The fact that the nations of Europe cannot defend themselves without resorting to NATO and the help of the United States has never been more obvious; and yet, it has never been less certain that the US commitment to European security will remain firm.”³ It is not hyperbole to state that Europe’s security is less dependent on what happens in Moscow than it is on decisions made in Washington. This fact should not be comforting to Europeans.

With U.S. retrenchment from Europe increasingly likely in the coming years, it would be tantamount to malpractice by American and European policymakers not to plan for such a contingency. Yet the timing and form of American retrenchment from Europe could vary. Retrenchment could arise from a specific choice by policymakers or may be forced by an unknown event. Europe’s responses to an American withdrawal are likewise unknown. Fashioning a viable European defense will require that policymakers across the continent make difficult choices, evaluate trade-offs, and overcome deep political and institutional divides.

This paper examines the dynamics of U.S. retrenchment from Europe. Rather than focusing on the unanswerable question of whether the U.S. will retrench, this paper instead offers a range of hypothetical but plausible scenarios exploring how retrenchment might happen, and how European states might respond. The scenarios make clearer something that is already understood implicitly by most: that there are better ways and worse ways for the United States to retrench from Europe — and for European states to respond. Assessing the trade-offs created by American retrenchment ahead of time can help policymakers to make better choices when the time comes.

Europe’s Collective Action Problem

Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, once infamously quipped that NATO’s purpose was to keep “the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”⁴ The aphorism stuck not merely because it was pithy. It also contained an uncomfortable truth: even at its founding in 1949, NATO was not an entirely uncomplicated institution. Defense against the Soviet Union was certainly the primary purpose behind the alliance’s creation. But NATO also provided a vehicle through which America could continue to shape European security, a way to neuter Germany as an independent military force, and a way to provide breathing space for states to rebuild after the ravages of World War II.

As time went on, it became clear that NATO was also filling another role. The original plan — at least as late as the Eisenhower administration — had been for America to take a step back from directly providing European security once local forces were capable of doing so. Historian Mark Trachtenberg notes: “If Eisenhower said it once, he must have said it a thousand times: a large-scale American military presence in Europe was originally supposed to be temporary.”⁵ But it quickly became apparent that European states were struggling to come together on defense; disagreements over threats, military capabilities, and defense coordination made it difficult for America to step back.

In the parlance of economics, when it came to defense, Europe had a collective action problem: though it would have been rational and efficient for European states to build a common defense against the Soviet Union, the lack of incentives for individual states to do so made that challenging. The simplest way to paper over this problem was for America to continue to take the lead. This status quo has persisted for decades, even as European states have come together in ways that would have seemed fantastical in the 1940s. Much of Europe now shares a monetary and customs union, and the 1985 Schengen Agreement permits freedom of movement across much of the continent. Nevertheless, defense policy remains stubbornly national.

The collective action problem has also been compounded by policy choices in Brussels and Washington. In the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union, both NATO and the European Union (EU) expanded aggressively, increasing the number of states whose interests had to be accommodated.⁶ The United States, for its part, often actively undermined the ability of European states to come together on defense outside the NATO framework and used the alliance itself as a vehicle for other policy priorities, from the war on terror to humanitarian interventions.⁷

The bottom line, however, is that Europe’s failure to achieve collective action on security persists, even as the threat from Russia has become clearer and the risk of U.S. retrenchment from Europe has grown. Indeed, the challenge today is not convincing elites that Europe must do more to stand on its own two feet. “Europe needs to be stronger,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared in April, “not a U.S. vassal.”⁸ Though few European leaders go this far publicly, in the last few years a wave of publications and public discussions — often funded by European governments — have sought to explore how Europe might cope with providing for its own defense in America’s absence.⁹ These discussions, however, have often served to highlight the difficulties inherent in European defense cooperation rather than suggest solutions. Four core dilemmas persist:

What Should the Focus of European Defense Be?

Though Washington likes to pretend otherwise, there is no such thing as “Europe.” The EU has successfully drawn together its members in commercial, regulatory, and monetary terms, but it is not a unified political entity; decisions on security rest in national capitals spread over thousands of miles. Among other things, this means European states do not have a unified threat perception. States in Eastern Europe are concerned about Russia, countries in southern Europe worry about the Mediterranean and migrant flows, and countries such as France have interests in Africa and elsewhere.

Which Capabilities Are Needed — and From Which Countries?

Although European spending on defense has increased by as much as 25% since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, capabilities— not just expenditures — matter for defense.¹⁰ Existing forces have become hollowed out in recent years thanks to budget cuts; new weapons systems and investment in defense production capabilities are also needed, particularly to fill shortfalls in capabilities traditionally provided by the United States (i.e., uncrewed aerial systems or short- and medium-range missiles).¹¹ This situation raises significant disagreements among states over which systems to prioritize, where to direct spending, and how to avoid duplicating others’ efforts. Some member states fear, reasonably, that delegating security capabilities to other European capitals — or to Brussels — might leave them in the lurch in the case of a hot war.

Who Reaps the Economic Benefits of Defense?

Parochialism also plays a role here; defense procurement promises to be the next big arena for inter-European contestation over EU funds, and member states want to promote their own domestic industries. Purchasing off-the-shelf weapons systems from the United States is by far the quickest way to fill holes in European capabilities, but doing so undermines the long-term development of an appropriate European defense-industrial base.¹² Progress toward common procurement and interoperability across Europe is slow and steady rather than transformative; as recently as 2022, only 18% of Europe’s investment in defense equipment was collaborative.¹³

How Should European Defense Preparedness Be Organized?

A variety of EU institutional mechanisms might help to finance and develop a cross-continental defense-industrial base; this approach has been remarkably successful in building infrastructure for economic statecraft in recent years. But such mechanisms were not designed for combined command or decision-making in a crisis.¹⁴ NATO, meanwhile, is better positioned to defend Europe in a crisis, but it remains heavily dependent on U.S. capabilities and personnel. Any viable path forward for European defense will need to reckon with the division of labor among the institutions of the European Union, the existing structures of NATO, and the evolution of sub-NATO units such as the Weimar Triangle (France, Germany, Poland).¹⁵

Fear and Loathing in Brussels

The failure of European states to produce an effective common defense is thus not a question of willingness — at least not only a question of willingness. Over the years, European leaders have certainly sought to free ride on America’s defense contributions. No European politician has an incentive to make decisions that are likely to be unpopular and costly, eating into government spending on domestic programs that European publics now take for granted. But with changes in U.S. domestic politics and volatile global conditions, these dilemmas can no longer be entirely put off, raising the practical questions of how fast and how effectively European countries can adapt to U.S. retrenchment.

Some change is already under way: the war in Ukraine has prompted a long-overdue increase in European defense spending; twenty-three NATO member states now spend at least two percent of GDP on defense, up from just six countries in 2022. Indeed, these spending increases began prior to 2022, with Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016 amid growing signs that the United States was overcommitted globally.¹⁶ While some continue to argue that a significant and de facto permanent U.S. presence in Europe is plausible, many on both sides of the Atlantic now view that prospect as excessively optimistic. As Nathalie Tocci of the Italian think tank Istituto Affari Internazionale puts it: “The US remains the only major power able to project its influence, including militarily, at the global level, but no longer represents the world’s undisputed hegemon. . . . the EU cannot just assume it can rely on the US as it once did.”¹⁷ Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, meanwhile, notes simply that “there is no way Washington will be able to maintain the current level of diplomatic engagement, force deployments, and resourcing to Europe over the longer term . . . The United States is overstretched.”¹⁸

U.S. retrenchment from Europe is thus an increasingly likely prospect in the coming years. The causes, timing, and form of that retrenchment, however, are all unclear, as is the question of how Europe might respond. The question of European defense is, as we have seen, not just a matter of willingness. A viable European defense will require tradeoffs and difficult choices. In the rest of this paper, we explore the dynamics of U.S. retrenchment from Europe, focusing not on the unanswerable question of whether the U.S. will retrench, but rather on why and how it might happen, and how Europe might respond.

Retrenchment and Response

Most discussions of U.S. retrenchment from Europe focus on the idiosyncratic nature of a potential second Trump presidency. The former president, after all, has made little secret of his disdain for the alliance and his distaste for paying the defense bill for rich European nations.¹⁹ Papers by potential appointees in a second Trump administration discuss creating a “dormant NATO” or even withdrawing from the alliance altogether.²⁰ But there are also scenarios for U.S. retrenchment from Europe in the next decade that do not involve a quixotic second term for Trump. Two key distinctions can help policymakers think through the range of possibilities:

Speed: America might retrench from the continent quickly, in response to some sudden political decision or crisis, creating an almost overnight gap in defense capabilities in Europe. But it might also leave more slowly, drawing down forces over a period of years or even a decade.
Intentionality: Though retrenchment might be precipitated by a decision in Washington, it could also arise from outside factors, such as a contingency in Asia, or a debt crisis here at home. Retrenchment might also occur via indecision: a slow hollowing out of American capabilities in Europe as America’s globe-spanning military presence becomes harder to sustain.

Speed of Retrenchment

	Fast	Slow
Intentional Retrenchment	“The Trump Shock”	“A Phased Withdrawal”
Unintentional Retrenchment	“A Taiwan Contingency”	“A Hollow NATO”

There are also a range of potential European responses to a U.S. withdrawal — or different ways in which Europeans might answer the core questions about European security posed above. Which countries or organizations will step forward to provide security and pay for European defense — and what capabilities they will prioritize — are questions whose answers are currently unknown. In some scenarios, certain responses are far more plausible than others. In this paper, we primarily focus on three types of European responses:

The first strategy individual European states might employ, “Bilateral Bargaining,” would involve direct appeals to the United States to backstop their security through bilateral defense commitments outside the NATO framework. This is a strategy most likely to be used by Eastern European states closest to Russia. Rather than building a more Europeanized NATO, for example, Poland or the Baltics might seek to engage directly with U.S. policymakers in order to secure guarantees about their sovereignty or territorial integrity, or simply to procure weapons.
A second, related strategy is a “China Quid Pro Quo,” in which European states — either bilaterally or as a group — offer the United States significant concessions on China policy, ranging from trade restrictions and export controls to military support, in exchange for a U.S. pledge to maintain specific capabilities in Europe.
A final strategy would focus on “Homegrown Adaptation” to U.S. retrenchment, necessitating a sudden sprint toward native European military capabilities in some form. This is by far the broadest of the options available because it could take multiple forms, ranging from a concerted European effort to build out a continental defense industrial base and create a coherent joint command structure to a much narrower, predominately national and minilateral approach in which states turn to smaller groupings like the Weimar Triangle to pool resources among those that are most willing — and most at risk.

European Strategies

	“Bilateral Bargaining”	“A China Quid Pro Quo”	“Homegrown Adaptation”
“A Trump Shock”	LIKELY	LIKELY	UNLIKELY
“A Phased Withdrawal”	UNLIKELY	UNLIKELY	LIKELY
“An Indo-Pacific Contingency”	UNLIKELY	UNLIKELY	LIKELY
“A Hollow NATO”	UNLIKELY	LIKELY	UNLIKELY

These three strategies are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but neither can they all be pursued in all circumstances. Combining a China quid pro quo with the pursuit of bilateral deals with the United States, for example, might be plausible. Pursuing bilateral deals with the United States, however, would at the same time play European states off against one another, undermining the broadest and most inclusive forms of homegrown European defense adaptation.

To explore these questions further, this paper outlines three plausible scenarios for U.S. retrenchment which take place across the next five to ten years and spins out the ways in which European states might respond to each. Scenario planning as a methodological tool is best understood not as a prediction of the future but rather as a way to explore how existing trends might combine or conflict to create a range of possible futures.²¹ For policymakers, scenarios can “help to reduce the scope of possibilities, decrease uncertainty, and make the different options more visible.”²² They serve thus as a way to stress-test strategy and explicitly surface trade-offs. In this case, by exploring how the different paths for American retrenchment could combine with European responses, U.S. decisionmakers can better understand how choices in Washington – and in Europe – might produce different policy outcomes.

Scenario One: A Taiwan Contingency

This scenario explores the Indo-Pacific contingency most likely to prompt a fast, but unintended American retrenchment from Europe. Though we see elements of bilateral bargaining and an attempted China ‘quid pro quo’ among European states attempting to limit the damage of U.S. withdrawal, practical limitations on weapons systems and U.S. military capacity render that strategy ineffective. In its place, however, the sudden and unexpected shock of the crisis prompts cross-European cooperation on defense, producing significant homegrown adaptation, recalling Jean Monnet’s conjecture that the European Union is best “forged in crisis.”

The 2024 election was a slog, pitting an antagonistic, bombastic Donald Trump against the unexpected candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris in an election widely viewed by Americans with apathy and disgust. Foreign policy was a central issue in the election, perceived by all parties as a way to show strength and by the Harris team as a way to demonstrate that a woman could be just as “tough” as a man on foreign policy.²³ In particular, the election worsened tensions in the Taiwan Strait; Donald Trump’s declaration in October that he would support Taiwanese independence “so long as they pay for our help” was followed shortly thereafter by Harris’s promise that the United States would “protect its allies no matter the cost.” Harris squeaked out a narrow electoral win in November, and although Jake Sullivan, her holdover National Security Advisor, attempted to walk back the inflammatory rhetoric, her statements during the campaign were taken seriously in Beijing, and in Taipei, where the independence-leaning ruling party began to openly debate the issue.²⁴

In Beijing, the mood was apocalyptic, as Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun warned that “whoever dares to split Taiwan from China will be crushed to pieces and suffer his own destruction.”²⁵ A brief tit-for-tat of economic measures between Taiwan and Beijing quickly escalated, as the People’s Liberation Navy began to move vessels into place for a blockade. Harris, drawing on the advice of her advisors, committed to a series of anti-blockade actions: reflagging and escorting merchant vessels through the tightening Chinese cordon, and approving several B-52 overflights of the Strait. This latter choice ended up sparking a broader conflict; a Chinese fighter jet, attempting a close intercept, miscalculated, colliding with the American plane, killing the crews of both aircraft.²⁶ Shortly thereafter, a U.S. Navy frigate escorting merchant ships toward Hualien Port was engaged by Chinese vessels; the exchange left four American sailors dead.²⁷ With growing public calls to retaliate, and the tightening of the Chinese blockade, both sides moved toward a broader conflict.²⁸

U.S. naval assets from the Seventh Fleet were already on high alert in the East China Sea, but President Harris ordered ships from the Fifth and Sixth Fleets through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Two carrier strike groups remained in the Gulf in preparation to blockade Chinese oil supplies leaving the Gulf, while a third continued to the Pacific, leaving the Western Mediterranean bereft of U.S. naval forces for the first time in decades. Marine Littoral Regiments were swiftly rushed to the Senkakus, Guam, and the Philippines, along with the 10^th Army Air and Missile Defense Command from Germany. To protect these forces and contest Chinese air control within the First Island Chain, war planners advocated for all fifth-generation U.S. aircraft and most uncrewed systems to be moved to the region from Europe and the Middle East. Various high-demand, low density capabilities — including long-range strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets such as SR-airborne warning and control systems or Poseidon antisubmarine warfare and aerial refueling capabilities — were also shifted to the Pacific. Patriot batteries were removed from bases in Eastern Europe, and hurriedly emplaced around at-risk U.S. bases.²⁹

As prewar studies had suggested, the high-intensity nature of the conflict and limited U.S. stockpiles of critical systems and ammunition — a result of the emptying of warehouses during the first few years of the war in Ukraine — only heightened the need for this redistribution of U.S. assets toward Asia.³⁰ Ground forces took longer to leave their European bases, but most were shifted towards the Indo-Pacific within two months, including the 7^th Army Training Command from Germany, and a variety of other units based in Italy and the United Kingdom whose expertise in logistics, air defense, and shore-based anti-access capabilities were needed in the Pacific.³¹ By the third month of the war in the Pacific, U.S. tactical nuclear weapons remained at six bases in five NATO member countries — Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye — but they were supervised by only a few thousand American soldiers, down from the over 100,000 U.S. troops stationed there in mid-2024.³²

The response in European capitals was incredulity. States in Western Europe had relied on American forces for security assistance since 1945; perhaps misled by Cold War-era examples — when a significantly larger U.S. military had sustained forces in multiple theatres — European policymakers could not fathom that U.S. forces had virtually vanished overnight. Indeed, President Harris continued to publicly state that America’s commitment to Europe’s defense was “ironclad.”³³ But with almost no military presence in Europe, that commitment seemed to rest entirely on a handful of nuclear weapons and the willingness of U.S. policymakers to “trade New York for Tallinn.”³⁴ Among NATO member states, policymakers moved quickly through the stages of grief, from denial and anger into bargaining.

A few — including Czech and Baltic leaders — sought U.S. reengagement by calling attention to their own tough stance on China. But that did not stem the outflow of US military assets. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in a hastily arranged visit to Washington, promised strong support for America’s war against China. Yet his attempt to link the two theaters together — and the argument that an unrestrained Russia might embolden China further — was at odds with the general unwillingness in most of the rest of Europe to fight America’s war in Asia. Indeed, heated debates in the Bundestag left the German government unwilling to make significant cuts to trade with China, and an ad hoc coalition of Germany, Hungary, and Italy stymied collective EU action on China sanctions. Even without this political opposition, practical problems were insurmountable: America needed the capabilities it had withdrawn from Europe in Asia, and no amount of trade concessions could resolve the shortfall.

The political picture on European defense seemed more promising than persuading Americans to stay. The EU, as its “godfather,” Jean Monnet was wont to note, was forged in a time of crisis.³⁵ As with COVID and the war in Ukraine, policymakers responded quickly. By the second month of the war, Germany had dropped its opposition to the issuance of debt in the form of so-called “Eurobonds” to fund immediate investment in Europe’s defense capabilities. A bond of 150 billion euros was earmarked for immediate production of tanks, artillery, and air defense systems. More controversial was the companion to this bond, another 75 billion euros designed to fund an Eastern Defense Initiative, funneling money from Brussels to the coffers of states on the EU’s eastern borders to be used for defense. Even with ample funds, however, mounting a coordinated European defense remained challenging. Some states increased their commitments through existing NATO Enhanced Forward Presence deployments, but with significant disquiet about an American Supreme Allied Commander Europe continuing to command largely non-American forces.

Over time, however, a mixture of existing NATO structures and new groupings emerged to fill the void. NATO Headquarters in Brussels continued to coordinate issues of military planning, intelligence sharing, and command and control, but much of the work on procurement, capabilities development, and even deployments was centered elsewhere: Poland was cooperating with France and Germany to improve its deterrent capabilities through the Weimar Triangle, and with the United Kingdom to provide ground forces and air defense capabilities. Over time, additional groupings emerged: Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland formed a new Eastern Partnership, and Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic engaged with Ukraine on Black Sea defense. The inclusion of Ukraine in some of these groupings raised political hackles in Berlin and elsewhere, but with the decline in the salience of NATO’s Article 5, hooking Ukraine into Eastern European defense became more organic and less contested. Over time, a patchwork network of overlapping defense commitments, spending and procurement agreements — and an EU Common Security and Defense Policy increasingly focused on funding — emerged to fill much of the gap left by the United States, helping to mitigate the short-term vulnerabilities of frontline states in Eastern Europe.

Scenario Two: A Hollow NATO

The second scenario looks at the dynamics of a slow, unplanned U.S. retrenchment from Europe, caused in this case by a debt crisis and resulting severe fiscal limitations. As with our first scenario, the fact that retrenchment is driven by concrete limitations makes it more difficult for European states to engage in either bilateral bargaining or a China-related quid pro quo with the United States. Unlike the first scenario, however, the slow-moving dynamics of a fiscal crisis — coupled with the inability of American policymakers to admit the U.S. commitment to Europe has declined — produces a less unified European response. Instead, Eastern European states most threatened by Russia are adapting their national and multilateral defense efforts to develop effective but limited conventional defense capabilities.

The latter part of the 2020s was rough for the United States of America — and for the world. A series of close elections produced a string of weak presidents; for two consecutive elections, no candidate won both the popular vote and the electoral college. Congress continued its general trend of malaise and gridlock; by 2028, the average age in the U.S. Senate had risen to an unprecedented 70 years old. The period was marked by continued federalization of core issues, as the Supreme Court decided to return power on abortion, healthcare, and voting rights to the states. Luckily, few significant crises emerged during a decade of doldrums, but partisan polarization continued apace. An elderly President Joe Biden found it increasingly difficult to fund any policy priorities under conditions of extreme congressional gridlock, as did his successor, former Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

In 2029, the United States breached the debt ceiling for the first time. It was not intentional; House Democrats and Republicans ran the clock out on negotiations, each assuming the other would give way. This strategy had worked in previous crises, after all. But in April 2029, this gamble failed; after exceeding the ceiling, it would take Congress a full month to reauthorize federal borrowing. The default and its aftermath caused panic in financial markets, plunging the United States into a deep recession, contracting the U.S. economy by 8% and costing an estimated three million jobs.³⁶ The three big credit ratings agencies — Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard and Poor — each downgraded U.S. government debt from AA+ to A, forcing the Fed to raise interest rates, making U.S. government borrowing more expensive and adding another $850 billion to the national debt almost overnight.³⁷ The housing market entered a prolonged downturn as mortgage rates spiked.³⁸

Three months later, with the agreement of congressional leaders, the Biden administration inaugurated a blue-ribbon commission on government spending to assess how best to respond to the spending and debt crisis. Modeled on the Simpson-Bowles Commission of 2010, the newly formed group recommended a series of deep and painful cuts to discretionary spending. Popular unrest grew over cuts to Social Security and Medicare — particularly among those whose retirement funds had been decimated in the 2029 stock market crash — and over Congress’ failure to enact any kind of stimulus in response to the steep recession. As a result, the commission recommended a 20% across-the-board cut to defense, along with caps to remain in place for ten years.³⁹ The budgetary constraints forced ruthless prioritization within the Pentagon, with an increasing focus placed on shielding the procurement and production of critical weapons systems and capabilities for the Indo-Pacific, protecting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air defense; and refueling capabilities from cuts, and instead cutting the production of 155mm artillery shells and delivery systems. It was obvious to planners that the primary utility of these systems would be in Europe or the Middle East; as one anonymous Pentagon source told the Washington Post, “I just don’t know what you’d fire a 155-round at out in the Pacific other than the water.”⁴⁰

But even high-demand systems suffered over the ensuing years. As tensions with China rose and budget caps remained in place, production of various high-demand systems — from high-mobility artillery rocket systems and Army tactical missile systems to Patriot systems and anti-ship missiles — slowed, and existing systems in Poland, the Baltics, and the Czech Republic were reallocated to protect U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea. With the procurement budget for F-35s cut, the Air Force began to relocate fighter wings from Italy and the United Kingdom to the Indo-Pacific. The service worst hit by the cuts was the Army, which saw its budget reduced substantially. Though the White House was keen to avoid the impression that it was abandoning Europe – particularly given the protestations of Eastern European allies — there was little choice but to reduce the number of U.S. personnel in Europe, first to the pre-2022 status quo, and then with subsequent reductions in each rotation. By 2032, U.S. troops in Europe numbered fewer than 10,000 — less than a tenth of what had been there as recently as 2024.

Policymakers continued to hope that this gradual drawdown would give time for European states to fill the gaps left by the exit of U.S. personnel and equipment — and would counter the perception that America was abandoning its alliance commitments. In his speech at NATO’s 82^nd summit in Warsaw in July 2031, President DeSantis emphasized America’s continued commitment to Article 5 — a sentiment warmly welcomed by Dutch and German leaders, but treated with much more skepticism by Polish, Baltic, and Nordic leaders. Indeed, the latter were increasingly frustrated. Initial attempts to persuade U.S. leaders to retain certain capabilities in Europe — including the offer to pay for at least some of the infrastructure and costs of maintaining U.S. personnel — had largely failed.⁴¹ These states also ran into headwinds in Brussels: German policymakers ardently opposed the use of Eurobonds to fund equipment purchases, while French policymakers were adamantly opposed to the use of European funds to purchase weapons from the United States. In the former, the problem was primarily one of spending priorities and threat perceptions; though the German government did not back away from its commitment to be “the backbone of deterrence and collective defense in Europe,” little new funding was apportioned to defense, and the Bundeswehr remained under strength and poorly funded. In France, the question was one of political will: though the nationalist government of Jordan Bardella increased French defense spending, it also pursued conciliatory relations with Moscow, forming a conservative, nationalist troika among Bardella, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and openly dismissing suggestions that Russia might pose a threat to Europe.

After Eastern European policymakers tried for three years to persuade policymakers in Berlin, Rome, and Paris to commit more troops and spending to the defense of Eastern European states, it was clear that concerted action at the European level was not going to be forthcoming. Instead, a loose coalition of the willing began to form: British troop commitments to Poland and the Baltics increased, facilitated by a network of bilateral and trilateral treaties. Moreover, integration of defense capabilities among Eastern European states and their Nordic neighbors increased dramatically, including air defense coordination through the Northern Sky Shield. Poland reintroduced conscription, and defense spending in Finland, Poland, and Sweden all increased dramatically, improving the quality and quantity of arms and personnel stationed along key borders with Russia and Ukraine. A mini-armaments boom took place across Europe, driven by Eastern European governments. The repurposing of old, Soviet-era ammunition factories in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine for renewed production of small arms and artillery ammunition gradually improved defense stockpiles over several years. Existing production of German-made IRIS-T air defense systems, along with British and French capabilities, also expanded. Though their governments were unwilling to make spending commitments, private banks in Germany and France issued loans for the armaments boom. The level of defense capabilities that states could maintain in Eastern Europe shifted from critically low levels to acceptable ones.

Yet in the absence of a unified response, European defense capabilities were substantially less than the sum of their parts. High-tech air enablers such as strategic and tactical airlift, electromagnetic warfare, and airborne command and control (C2) — all required for modern combined arms warfare — largely remained too expansive and hard to procure for Eastern European states.⁴² Elsewhere in Europe, gaps in naval capabilities went unaddressed, but in the absence of a significant threat to contest, these gaps did not produce catastrophic outcomes.⁴³

NATO itself continued to cling to old strategic doctrines, whose embedded assumptions about American participation in European defense were contradicted by the realities on the ground; NATO’s Secretariat in Brussels and military coordination functions became increasingly irrelevant in Eastern Europe. Instead, Eastern front states began to kludge together new collective planning, intelligence sharing, and command structures independent of existing NATO frameworks, assisted by the United Kingdom on a bilateral basis. This process was slow, inefficient, and duplicative, relying on lead-nation arrangements to build a workable command structure. Combined with the lack of various capabilities, this patchwork of agreements steered Eastern European states toward more asymmetric and low-tech defensive strategies. These strategies were modeled on Ukraine’s successful ability to resist the Russian invasion after the initial onslaught, which focused on denying Russia a quick victory without necessarily defeating Russian military aggression outright.

Scenario Three: The Trump Shock

This scenario explores the most widely anticipated form of U.S. retrenchment from Europe — a Trump move to pull the U.S. out of a “dormant NATO.” Contrary to Donald Trump’s own statements to the press, even this cannot be accomplished overnight. But it nonetheless takes the form of relatively swift, intentional steps by U.S. policymakers to transition America’s role in NATO from that of first responder to that of the last resort. The lack of concrete resource limitations in this scenario — the fact that it is a choice — opens the door to Bilateral Bargaining by high-spending Eastern European states that are able to play upon Donald Trump’s susceptibility to flattery and lobbying, as well as his administration’s strong opposition to China. The development of these bilateral, informal U.S. commitments to several Eastern European nations undermines broader European cooperation on defense.

By November 2024, the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term was almost a foregone conclusion. Former President Joe Biden’s poor debate performances and obvious frailty worried voters, and though Democrats continued to campaign on Biden’s record as a champion of democracy, the electorate was unconvinced. The result, though entirely expected, merely deepened the mood of gloom in European capitals. European diplomats stationed in Washington scrambled to ascertain whether Trump really intended to follow through on his campaign promise to withdraw from NATO on Inauguration Day.

In the end, as had so often been the case during his first term, Trump’s policy shifts were not quite as draconian as they could have been. Staffed by a selection of advisors tied to right-wing think tanks, Trump’s national security staff disagreed among themselves on whether the United States should fully withdraw from NATO. All, however, agreed that the time had come for a “radical reorientation” of NATO.⁴⁴ At the behest of the president, national security advisor Robert O’Brien began a series of meetings with European ambassadors, telling them bluntly that America would no longer be paying for their defense. They could raise defense spending — or suffer the consequences.

The move kicked off a sudden rush by European states to appear as willing as possible to spend more on defense, though much of this amounted in practice to budgetary chicanery. Over time, however, the turnover in Trump administration personnel elevated those who favored a shift to a “Dormant NATO.” Playing on Trump’s obvious distaste for free-riding foreigners, these advisors eventually persuaded him to take more consequential steps.

In a post on Truth Social laden with spelling errors, the president announced that the United States would be turning responsibility for European security over to the Europeans and removing U.S. capabilities from the continent within a year. “No longer,” National Security Advisor O’Brien told reporters that afternoon, “will the American people spend their hard-earned taxes providing security for rich, ungrateful, woke Europeans.” As with the president’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, this sudden about-face in policy took European capitals — which had hoped the worst was behind them — by surprise.

True to his word, the first troops began departing from bases in Eastern Europe within weeks, though Trump’s military advisors persuaded him that it would be almost impossible to conduct a full withdrawal in less than three years. Using the model provided by the U.S. retrenchment from Europe after the end of the Cold War, the Department of Defense began a concentrated program of base closures and reassignment of personnel; this process was sped by the cancellation of American participation in major NATO exercises.⁴⁵ In line with much of the criticism among conservatives that NATO should only include military structures necessary for war, the Trump administration also revoked U.S. funding for NATO itself and recalled American staff from their roles in Brussels and Mons, Belgium, and elsewhere.⁴⁶ This step — taken by Trump administration officials unfamiliar with the structure of U.S. deployments to Europe — only added to the confusion within NATO; many American military officers were forced to give up their NATO positions, while continuing their work in their other official capacities as part of U.S. European Command.⁴⁷ These conflicting orders would not be resolved for months.

The initial response to Trump’s decision was panicked, producing a round of shuttle consultations among French, German, and British policymakers, along with an emergency meeting of defense ministers at the European Council. Eastern European leaders called on their counterparts in Western Europe to immediately increase their defense commitments, but few concrete pledges were forthcoming. Instead, a joint communique of EU leaders proclaimed their dedication to a common European defense and promised further urgent consultations. Frustrated by the slow pace, the Polish government pursued a dual-track approach: working through existing European institutions but negotiating quietly with the United States at the same time. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, in one visit to Washington, commiserated with Donald Trump about weak-willed Western Europeans who cared little for defense and security, pointing out Poland’s excellent record of military spending and commitment to defending its own borders. In exchange for exempting Poland from the American retrenchment plan, he suggested that the Polish government might pay the costs of a new base in Poland for 10,000 American troops, and — in an obvious attempt to appeal to China hawks within the administration — implied that Warsaw could be trusted to block China-friendly moves by the European Commission. He built on the arguments of Russia hawks within the administration, who proposed a “two-tiered” alliance in which the United States would protect only those states that in Washington’s view spent enough on defense.⁴⁸ To the horror of Trump’s more nationalist advisors, Tusk’s flattery was effective, and the new Fort Trump opened in 2026, even as U.S. troops were leaving other countries in Europe.⁴⁹

The Polish quid-pro-quo model provided a template for other European countries, and a steady stream of leaders passed through Washington, each extolling the virtues of their nation’s defensive capabilities and attempting to win bilateral U.S. support. Poland’s shift to solicit implicit American security guarantees outside of NATO also worsened the gridlock within the European Union, where states continued to disagree about how to apportion spending on arms and whether to coordinate defensive capabilities; this in turn encouraged other states to seek bilateral U.S. guarantees. Few, however, were as successful as Poland had been. Estonia succeeded in obtaining U.S. troop deployments; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was publicly humiliated when Donald Trump told pool reporters that “the Germans have just forgotten how to fight.”

Across most of Europe, the hurried retrenchment continued as planned. By the time Donald Trump left office, what had emerged in European security was a Frankenstein creation: a patchwork of strategically incoherent bilateral American commitments to specific states, a handful of high-spending and relatively capable nations in Eastern and Western Europe, and a larger mass of states in Southern and Eastern Europe — far away from obvious threats — where the status quo of low threat perceptions and low defense budgets persisted. Trump’s partial U.S. retrenchment served one purpose: it took issues of NATO expansion off the table and dramatically reduced the influence and power of the NATO bureaucracy in Brussels. At the same time, it did little to reduce the risk of conflict and escalation for the United States. If anything, the partial retrenchment worsened the strategic situation for the United States, replacing a multilateral alliance structure that could — at least in theory — constrain allies with a set of less formal security commitments characterized by tripwire forces and unclear redlines. This created a significant dilemma for the presidents who followed Trump. Should they maintain this patchwork of ad hoc commitments to avoid making more difficult choices? Should they recommit to Europe more broadly at significant cost? Or should they lean in and finish the process of retrenchment?

Three Wildcards

One difficulty in scenario planning is the temptation to add too many variables, producing excessively complex and implausible scenarios. For this reason, this paper has focused on the core questions surrounding American retrenchment from European conventional defense and the range of European responses. Nonetheless, three wildcard variables are worth highlighting. They share some commonalities: each is important in the context of European security but, at the same time, each is crosscutting and largely independent of the choices and events that occur in the scenarios above.

The first of these is Russian behavior. Though Russia remains the most obvious threat to NATO member states during any gap created by American retrenchment from the continent, this does not mean that Russia will take any particular actions in the aftermath of a U.S. withdrawal. Moscow may or may not act, but given the poor performance of the Russian military in the war in Ukraine, and the destruction of many of its capabilities, the Russian threat to Eastern Europe will be significantly less for at least the next 5 to 10 years, roughly the time period covered by these scenarios.⁵⁰ Each of our scenarios thus assumes that the relationship of at least some European states with Russia remains tense – but primarily peaceful – during the scenario period.

The second unknown is the war in Ukraine itself. It seems relatively unlikely that another significant aid supplemental will be approved by Congress, limiting the extent to which the war will bear on the decisions of U.S. policymakers considering retrenchment. For European policymakers, the war in Ukraine may well shape at least some of their strategic choices following a U.S. decision to retrench from Europe. Some states — particularly those in Western Europe — might want to shift funding to procurement capabilities for their own militaries, while those in Eastern Europe could calculate that continuing to keep Russia tied down in Ukraine during their period of greatest weakness could only be to their benefit. Yet the Ukraine conflict itself might be resolved through a peace agreement before the events in these scenarios take place or, equally likely, it could be ongoing as a low-level attritional conflict well into the next decade.⁵¹ For this reason, it was excluded from the scenarios.

A third wildcard is the question of nuclear deterrence. Roughly one hundred American nuclear weapons are currently stationed at six bases in five NATO member countries: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, and the question of how European states would ensure nuclear deterrence in the event of American retrenchment remains unclear.⁵² Trump confidantes have suggested that a U.S. pullback from Europe need not include the U.S. nuclear umbrella, while others have argued that the pullback itself inherently makes extended deterrence noncredible.⁵³ NATO contains two other nuclear powers — Britain and France — but uncertainties about nuclear sharing (which allows non-nuclear allies to participate in planning for nuclear use), forward deployment, and the limited number of deployed French and British warheads all raise questions about whether either could fill the U.S. role in deterring Russia. As with the first two issues, the question of nuclear deterrence cuts across our scenarios, as states might choose to resolve the question of how to manage nuclear deterrence in different ways.

Conclusion

These scenarios highlight the scope and size of the challenge facing both U.S. and European policymakers. Attempting to rebalance a security relationship that has grown and evolved organically over decades is a complex and daunting task. Yet at the same time, these scenarios highlight not only that American retrenchment from Europe is possible — even likely — in a variety of situations, but that some forms of retrenchment produce notably better outcomes than others. Indeed, perhaps the most surprising takeaway from these scenarios is that a relatively swift and thorough American exit from Europe might in practice produce a more coherent collective response, thanks to EU member states’ well-known tendency to pull together during crises. In slower, “boiling-a-frog” scenarios — or in those where the United States undertakes only a partial and incomplete retrenchment — the corresponding reactions in Europe may not be as positive. A half-hearted approach to retrenchment appears to produce more measured responses in European capitals, leaving them unwilling to act assertively and in ways that might make the transition to homegrown European defense preparedness more effective.

For policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic, the scenarios also suggest the importance of planning for retrenchment in advance, rather than fumbling through it in a crisis. For European states, these scenarios suggest that some strategies might work better than others. And for Washington, the notion of planning for retrenchment is supported by research which suggests that, if done correctly, retrenchment and prioritization can leave a great power in a substantially better position than previously.⁵⁴ Certainly, these scenarios are not predictive; the future is unlikely to unfold in exactly the ways laid out in any of the scenarios in this paper. But they are plausible stories that help policymakers to understand the tradeoffs inherent in any move toward U.S. retrenchment from Europe — and to plan for them. The alternative is to play American roulette, gambling recklessly and unnecessarily with the future of European security.

Notes

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2
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